A.T. Jackson

Introduction & Synopsis Before we begin, it should be noted that while writing this review, I am assuming that the reader has already read the first four installments in the series. As such, do not be surprised if you encounter spoilers for the previous installments in the series. You have been warned. In Nemesis Games , the fifth installment in the popular series The Expanse, which has been adapted into a television series by SyFy, is a novel that dares to shake up the status quo of the series. While waiting for repairs of the Rocinate to be completed on Tycho Station, the ship's crew go their separate ways, each one aiming to resolve personal issues that have been plaguing them since before the beginning of the series. Alex goes to Mars in order to find some closure with his ex-wife, Amos travels back to Earth in order to pay his respects to his recently deceased surrogate mother, Naomi visits Ceres in order to reconcile with her long-lost son, and James is trapped on...

James S.A. Corey's Cibola Burn is another enjoyable instalment within  The Expanse series of novels. After the events of the previous novel in the series, Abaddon's Gate , a thousand worlds have been opened up to humanity via the Ring Builder's network of ancient wormhole generators. The political powers within the solar system are now beginning the preliminary stages of exploring and colonising the largest and most daring frontier in human history. A small group of refugees from Ganymede, which was the site of a battle which destroyed the colony on the Jovian moon, are the first to colonise a world outside of the solar system. Meanwhile, another colony ship, being regulated under UN jurisdiction, has also laid claim of the planet. James Holden and the crew of the Rocinate is sent to curtail the building political tensions between the two groups of colonists, survive the harsh alien biosphere of this new frontier, and uncover the secrets that lie beneath the planet...

Historian Philip Parker, author of The Empire Stops Here: A Journey Around the Frontiers of the Roman World , brings us a gripping historical recitation of one of the most famous (arguably infamous) cultures in European history. Possessing a highly spiritualist and widely misunderstood culture, the term Viking has become synonymous with violence and bloodshed. This, in truth, as those whom have read this book would already know, is only one small sliver of the Viking way of life. The Vikings were a highly religious people, with an entire plethora of myths and legends. Philip Parker's book The Northmen's Fury: A History of The Viking World, details the rise and fall of the Viking's empire, from the Danish expansion to the British Isles, Iceland and Greenland, their short-lived escapade into North America to the slow and steady erasure of Viking culture in Kiev and the social evolution that lead to the Battle of Hastings, at which time the traditional Viking as we remembe...